Singer and writer Nick Cave says the death of his two sons made him realise that art was not everything, and that responsibility to his wife and family now drive him.
The Australian musician told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that his wife and family are now the source of his creativity, and where he finds his joy.
“It’s difficult to exaggerate how beautiful this is that I have a little grandson, who’s like seven months old,” he told the show.
Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died in Brighton in a cliff-jumping accident in 2015 and his eldest son Jethro died aged 31 in Melbourne in 2022.
The frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 67, told host Lauren Laverne of his changing attitude: “It has a lot to do with Arthur and Jethro… I always just thought art was, kind of at the end of the day, everything.
“I mean, it’s a terrible thing to say, but it was, it was always there. It was always reliable.”
He said he would go into an office each day, lock the door and “work away… sort of, you know, in awe of my own creative potential”.
“And I think after Arthur died, I just shut the office, and I haven’t gone, I just locked it up,” he said. “I was just repelled by it in some way. It seems so indulgent.”
Cave has previously spoken about his grief over losing his sons, saying after Arthur’s death that he felt his presence all the time.
“Grief and love are forever intertwined,” he wrote in an open letter. “Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.”
He told Laverne that while he still works “very, very hard” it is no longer the “be-all and end-all of everything”.
Cave, known for songs including Red Right Hand and Into My Arms, continued: “I find my responsibility towards my children and my wife, and to be a citizen, a husband, these things are the actual animating force behind, or should be the animating force behind our creativeness.”
He said his greatest joy comes “from my family and from my wife, one aspect of my family that it’s difficult to exaggerate how beautiful this is that I have a little grandson who’s like, seven months old”.
Cave and his family, including Arthur’s twin Earl and fashion designer wife Susie, have moved from Brighton to Los Angeles as they found it too difficult living so close to where Arthur died.
He set up online site the Red Hand Files in 2018, partly to help others whose lives have been hit by sadness or loss – it allows fans to ask Cave questions, and he replies to some of the hundreds he receives each week.
“What I really want to try and do is let people know in some way that it doesn’t have to be thus, and that there is a world beyond the grief that they feel,” he said.
Cave is going on tour in North America this spring, and told Laverne he will retire from music when he can no longer perform knee drops on stage.
But he admitted: “I could do (them), I can get down. It’s getting up. It’s a little bit harder.”
Listen to Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 at 10:00 GMT on Sunday 26 January and later on BBC Sounds.
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